


Giants

by Buttons15



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Gen, Psychological Trauma, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9356279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttons15/pseuds/Buttons15
Summary: A moment into the mind of child soldier Hana Song. Trigger warning.





	

Hana Song hadn’t seen the sun in days, perhaps weeks – she wouldn’t know. It was hard to keep track of time in the battlefield, mostly because _Geohan_  was large enough it blotted out the sun. Its presence loomed in the horizon like a lovecraftian abomination, always there, always approaching. It walked slowly, taking its time. Some days it did not move at all. At first, the sound of the army’s bombs blasting against the giant’s metal hull would wake her.

She had grown used to the sound.

Song wasn’t there to fight the monster, though. Rather, she and her unit of mecha pilots had to deal with the wave of smaller but no less dangerous omnics that preceded the _Geohan’s_ arrival. Bastion units of different levels of technological advance and, she figured, also different levels of sentience. Hana didn’t like to think about that much – it weighted her conscience, of all things.

No, she closed her eyes and believed those machines had no mind and no feelings, and if that was what it took for her not to hesitate, then so be it. Her body twitched in involuntary trembling. It was cold, and the damp mud she laid in didn’t help. She exhaled, and her breath condensed in little puffs. Her in-ear phone creaked.

“Captain to mecha unit gamma, confirm position.”

She waited five seconds. Nothing. Ten seconds. Nothing. “Gamma three in position,” she called.

Fifteen seconds passed. “Gamma six in position.”

Seven, eight and eleven confirmed their positions. Out of a unit of twelve, they still had five – a surprisingly high survival rate. Hana pulled her arms closer to her torso to try and keep some heat. Her mecha armband illuminated the ditch with a faded green light – a sign they had locked on to her position and were ready to perform an orbital drop whenever she summoned.

“Captain to gamma, approaching target.”

Hana realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out slowly. Noise filled her ears and it took her a couple seconds to register its source as rain. She felt ice crawl into her bones as the water flowed in rivulets inside the trench, soaking her. She let out a quiet, humorless chuckle of sheer hysteria.

_Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to survive so far only to die of hypothermia?_

Yet she somehow hoped at least some of the seven of her unit were gone for thermic reasons, because the alternative was much less peaceful.

“Way is clear. Estimated time of arrival in twenty minutes. Unit gamma, wait in position. Over and out.”

What did twenty minutes even felt like again? She couldn’t remember. Fiddling with her armband, she managed after some struggle to put some music on – Brazilian freedom fighter Lucio’s new album, Synesthesia. His voice had a soothing quality to it that always helped her calm down before – or after – a battle. Besides, music was a good way of keeping track of time.

Hana closed her eyes and waited. When her fifth song was interrupted by the communicator, she knew even before she heard the message that there was something wrong, because five songs were about fifteen minutes so the leader was too soon.

“We’ve been flanked, fall back!” the Captain yelled, breathless. “I repeat, gamma unit fall back! Abort mission, abort – ”

_Trrrrr – schleeek._

It was a sound she knew all too well – the sound of a human body being ripped apart by the bullets of a turret bastion unit. Yanking her communicator from her helmet, she hit it against a rock until it was made into indistinguishable pieces. Once a mecha was down, it was only a matter of time for the omnics to trace back the entire unit. Newer mechas had communicators with advanced cryptography, but if Song had lived through so many missions, it was by being careful.

Hana closed her hands into fists. Her stomach turned. A retreat command was a nice way of saying ‘each person by themselves’. It wasn’t the first time that happened to her, and she hoped she would live enough that it wouldn’t be the last. She made calculations in her mind. If the omnics were flanking from the east, then her best shot would be making a run to the southwestern base.

A kilometer and a half run, at least.

She could make it.

She crawled out of the hole, splashing through mud that stunk of oil and metal. Whether the smell of iron came from the rusting parts of destroyed omics or from the much more organic scent of human blood, she could not tell. Keeping her head down, Hana rolled away from the ditch. From her position in higher ground, she turned east and couldn’t see any approaching troops.

She knew that didn’t mean much – a bastion in turret configuration could rain bullets that threw down airplanes, and sniper omnic units could headshot her from as far as a mile. Still, she’d been trained to make use of her country’s topography. She could slide down the hill really fast, but once she was down, she’d have to dodge for cover.

Usually, she could make that distance in little less than fifteen minutes. In her current situation, she’d expect at least double that. Whether or not to call her mecha was a decision that could save her or kill her. She’d move faster, sure, but she’d also compromise her position and even though she couldn’t see the wave of reinforcements _yet_ , smaller omnic units could be behind the next hill.

Hana decided the stakes were too high. She had better odds unnoticed. Standing up and taking a deep breath, she got to it. Of course, the plan sounded much better in her head than in reality, and as she ran gasping for air, she just tried really hard not to think about how exposed she was and how frail a seventeen year old girl was in the middle of war machines.

 _On the bright side I’m not cold anymore,_ she thought bitterly after she was already halfway through.

And then she heard gunshot, louder than the constant background, and on pure instinct she ducked and rolled. A split second later, her brain registered warm pain radiating from her left shoulder.  She didn’t have time to make a plan, and so she acted, dashing inside the nearest Bastion carcass and praying to any deity who might be hearing that it would give her cover.

Hana had never before experienced something quite as terrifying as the next dozen seconds, in which all she could do was wait and hope the metal hull would shield her in whatever direction she was being sniped from. When a minute passed and her head was still on her shoulders, she allowed herself to close her eyes for a moment and sob.

It was a mistake. She found then that she couldn’t stop.

 _Get a grip, Song,_ she told herself. _You’re a strategist. Think. Think like a game._

But it was not a game and she knew it. In a game the mere act of getting behind cover would mean her health bar regenerated and she had time to think. In real life, every second she wasted meant the swarm was closer. She clutched the wound on her shoulder, trying to stop the blood which oozed from it. Her impulse had been good, and the bullet had only grazed her. It was still deep enough to tear muscle.

The pain helped her focus.

_Gotta call the mecha._

Her fingers hovered over the wristband. She knew the orbital drop would be immediate, once the machine was summoned, she would still have to get inside, something she estimated would take at least five seconds. A sniper rifle, she knew, needed about seven seconds to recharge after a shot. That gave her a two second margin of error.

_If there’s only one sniper. If it falls for my trick. If._

She had no choice. She took off her helmet, shaking her hair free, and reached inside the Bastion for anything she could use as a stick. She settled with a gun barrel. Placing it inside the helmet, Hana slowly raised her arm so that the helmet stuck out of cover, praying the omnic was placed in a position that it would shoot the helmet rather than hand.

She heard a bang. The helmet was ripped from the barrel and flew, its visor shattered.

_One._

Hana slapped the button on her wristband and ran.

_Two._

Faster than she could blink, something blinked on the sky and she saw the mecha descend.

_Three._

It hit the ground with a bang, two meters ahead of her.

_Four._

She dashed for it, tripping on a cogwheel on her way.

_Five._

She didn’t fall – would be dead if she fell. Her ankle hurt but she kept running.

_Six._

Hands touched control sticks and a synthetic leather seat. She scrambled up, heart hammering, and hit the close cockpit button.

_Seven._

The sound of metal hitting metal rung in the air. She didn’t stop to assess where the damage had been made, instead slamming the thrusters at full power. She didn’t bother with the defense matrix, not with a sniper from an unknown direction. She just redirected full power to the engines and never looked back, because she knew exactly what she would see.

Hana didn’t think she could bear with _Geohan’s_ oppressive figure watching in the distance as she fled.

 

* * *

 

She made it to the base. So did gamma eight. When night came they stopped expecting any of the other three. Omnics could see in the dark – humans couldn’t. Humans needed sleep – omnics didn’t. She took an Ambien before she laid in bed and closed her eyes.

Her primary duty to her country and was to keep morale high. She smiled to the cameras. She recorded live videos of her and her mecha squad crushing battalions of omnics. All staged, of course. But more and more often, as the ranks of the army thinned, she was deployed on actual missions and reality, as the frontlines dutifully reminded her, was much grimmer.

Her dad had always been a Starcraft fan, and it was the first game she’d ever played. It felt like centuries in the past. Her mother was never a fan of her gaming career – she and many others thought it was not womanly. Hana had always been proud to prove them wrong by being her country’s best.

Yet at that moment, lying in bed, she found herself wishing she’d listened to her mother.

More and more often, Hana caught herself wishing she’d never gamed at all.

She took another Ambien to make sure she would have dreamless sleep.


End file.
